Duncan KyleReseñas

The book was written in 1981. The plot is interesting but can't be called racy. The ending is pretty sad.

Sæmilega skrifuð, illa þýdd, niðurstaðan þokkaleg skemmtun.

It’s 1941. The United States has not yet entered the Second World War. An organization of expatriate Germans in the States is trying to drum up loyalty to the Fatherland. It’s not averse to a little blackmail in order to get people on board, and pilot Ernie Miller is about to find this out the hard way. As a pilot, he may be called upon to use these skills for nefarious means…

I picked up this book entirely on the strength of the cheerful yellow seaplane on the cover, and it was a wise purchase indeed. About half the book is set in Canada, which I was not expecting at all, so that was a nice bonus. And the book delivered amply on the aviation front: lots of technical details to keep the nerds like me happy, but plenty of adventure and thrills as well. Less helpful was the eyeroll-inducing language about women’s instincts whenever Ernie’s wife, Dot, was mentioned—and this is definitely more of a man’s fictional universe. Nevertheless, I enjoyed this a great deal, and I found it had a fresh enough (to me) angle on the Second World War to hold my interest.½

Good rollicking adventure story.....one that makes you want to bundle up, no matter where you are! A typical simple normal guy finds himself sucked into an exciting adventure of international (and cold!) intrigue, and sets out with a bunch of strangers to accomplish the impossible in a most unforgiving climate. Very fun....expecially since i was vacationing in FL when i read it!!

Whiteout - Duncan Kyle **** (Also released under the heading In Deep)

One day (if not already) there will be a list drawn of all the world’s greatest action/adventure authors. There will be the likely candidates of MacLean/Fleming/Higgins etc, and I just hope that the compiler remembers to add Duncan Kyle into that list, and hopefully he will be somewhere near the top.

Whiteout follows the adventures of Harry Bowes, a salesman from a company that makes all terrain snow vehicles, a sort of hovercraft. In order to try and secure a deal with the army he is offered a chance to demonstrate the machines capabilities at Camp 100, cut off and situated high above the Arctic Circle. However things don’t go entirely to plan and bodies start appearing all around him, being a naturally inquisitive man he decides to do a little investigating and ultimately endangers his own life in the process.

I loved the way Kyle describes the barren environment and the harshness of the men’s situation that you get the feeling he must have experienced these conditions himself. He manages to pack so much into the books 224 pages that any fan of the genre will find something to satisfy them. In some ways I felt the book deserved 5 stars but on occasion I found the way in which Harry was received by the military was a little unrealistic. Here is a man with no major connection to the station, which at times is allowed to wander around unguarded or unseen, even though there is obviously a murderer /sabotager at work. It needed a bit more substance in the plot to really allow the reader to believe this could happen. Having said that, I really enjoyed the book and finished it with a sense of satisfaction that very few authors provide.

Green River High - Duncan Kyle ****

Having been a fan of Alistair Maclean for many years it is a natural progression to try other authors in a similar field. Duncan Kyle appears to have been almost forgotten in recent years and that is a real shame as many of his books are as good today as when they were first written. Green River High isn’t one of his best stories, but it is still worth discovering.

An ex soldier, now bank clerk (George Tunnicliffe) foils a robbery where he works. His name becomes plastered across the press and as a result he receives communication from two individuals who knew his father a number of years previous. It seems that his now deceased father had rather a colourful life and was involved in the disappearance of thousands of rubies during World War 2. The only problem now is that there is only person alive who knows the area well enough to try and locate the crash site, and she is an aging ex mercenary who strikes a hard bargain for the sake of the church.

Anyone who likes a book to have a fair piece of action, double crossing and adventure in faraway lands then give this a try. Many of these novels have dated over the years, but Kyle still seems relatively fresh. I particularly like the way in which he describes his characters, and the trek across the English countryside could well have been taken from a Buchan novel.

Not quite a 5* read, but a very decent 4*

Thrilling and clever historical treasure hunt. A new executive at a respected London Bank queries an unusual annual payment. This results in a series of written accounts of a British officer's mission to Russia in 1918, right into the heart of the Revolution in search of the Russian Royal family. However it also states that the story will bring about disaster for the bank, and the bankers must jump through numerous costly an humiliating hoops to receive each installment of the story.

Really enjoyable, though slightly reminiscent of Brian Garfield's Kolchak's Gold - albeit not as epic. Still, a lot of fun.

My first book by the author, and also his first published novel.

Dr Edwards receives a packed addressed to a Professor Ed Ward, in it there is a notebook written in Russian. As soon as he is in receipt of the parcel there are attempts made on his life.

He manages to escape and goes looking for the parcels rightful owner. What follows is tale of action, deceit and mystery that takes him all to way into the Russian Arctic as part of a crack team on a rescue mission.

A well written novel that any fan of Jack Higgins or Alistair Maclean will love.

I will definately be seeking out more of the authors works.

It all starts when an attempt to bring a war criminal to justice goes wrong.

I tried not to let the tawdry 70s jacket illustration put me off: Duncan Kyle, on the dust cover of the hardback, hints that a lot more of this fiction is true than might be expected of a thriller. But that’s just what he might say, you might assume, in order to help sell the book. It’s a cunning device, isn’t it, designed to elicit the response, “It makes you think…” And yet the writing draws you in, so that from all the verbatim conversations, seemingly genuine documents and the detailed clandestine action you could almost believe it’s all true.

Almost, but not quite. The last action sequence is just so much The Guns of Navarone or Where Eagles Dare that, for all its tight plotting, the spell of verisimilitude largely dissipates. The storyline involves disillusioned SS soldiers, British spies, an Irish journalist and sundry supporting cast members, plus a backdrop of Wewelsburg Castle and a parody of King Arthur’s capital with its own Round Table (Himmler had planned the site in 1934 to be a school for SS leaders, using some Arthurian themes, but its function evolved in ever more sinister ways). Who can you trust in wartime? Is there such a thing as chivalry? And can you learn to cheer for the two antiheroes who become unlikely buddies? Despite myself I couldn’t, once I’d progressed a fair way, put it down.

Duncan Kyle was the pen name of John Franklin Broxholme, a journalist and editor turned writer. He didn’t experience the second world war as a soldier (he was born in 1930 and thus only in his mid-teens at the outbreak of peace) but he did do national service. Apparently these two years were spent with British Army Intelligence, something that must have helped him to turn out thrillers with resourceful heroes and which certainly will have helped him add that sense of authenticity to Black Camelot. There’s a certain irony that the soldiers who attack this anti-Camelot, despite their enforced knightly fellowship, are essentially freelancers, a term apparently coined by Walter Scott to describe medieval mercenaries in Ivanhoe; and Broxholme himself effectively became a freelance author after years of collaborative work in national service and journalism. Perhaps that's why he found it easy to portray self-sufficient loners in his thrillers: writing often is a very lonely task.

http://calmgrove.wordpress.com/2012/12/21/camelot/½